by david allan van nostrand | Aug 31, 2026 | origin story, The Wayback Machine
The earth’s outer shell, called the crust, is mostly rock. It’s at its thickest beneath the Himalayan Mountains, where it’s 45 miles deep. Most of the rock contains significant amounts of feldspar, the most plentiful mineral on earth. The word feldspar comes from the...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 24, 2026 | Human Behavior, Items in the News, The Wayback Machine, The world around us
Francisco de Goya painted Niños Jugando al Balancín in 1792. They’ve just kids, goofing around, making their own plaything from what’s handy. No GameBoys for these game boys. My first impression was how unstable it must be, one round log teetering on another round...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 17, 2026 | Behind the curtain, Inventions, The world around us
When we look at maps, what we see is not what we get. In 1569, Gerardus Mercator solved the problem that had forever vexed mapmakers: maps are flat and the Earth is round, more or less (technically, it’s an oblate spheroid). The biggest downside to the Mercator is...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 10, 2026 | Americana, The Wayback Machine
We all know about hunters and gatherers and how primitive societies tended to be one or the other. You won’t find many gatherers far up above the Arctic Circle where all is ice, snow, and patches of open water. Except for sled dogs, lost birds, and the occasional...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 3, 2026 | Americana, Fads, origin story, The Wayback Machine
Throughout most of the 1880s, men wore hats, suits, and ties every day and everywhere. Called sack suits, they had three pieces. The loose, hanging single-breasted jacket, the matching vest, and trousers. Nearly all the shirt was covered by the jacket and vest, but...
